Arctic temperatures soar 25 degrees above normal in the dead of winter • Hacker News Board

Re: Arctic temperatures soar 25 degrees above normal in the dead of winter

#121

Post by igravious » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 8:14 AM UTC

fyfy18 wrote: post #107

igravious wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A few years of this does not make it normal. I wasn't implying that. > Implying they haven't been in the past. Nor that. My only intention was to agree with the original commenter that the title and start of the article made it sound like this one event was a complete anomaly. Later on we find out that, no, this has been happening for a while. If it is not an anomaly then we need to know how frequently this tempera…

Another commenter posted a link to climate data from the Danish Meteorological Institute for the artic region for the past 50 years: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php For most of the dataset the winter temperatures have followed the model fairly well (of course there are spikes), but for the last few years the winter temperature has been significantly higher than the model.

The "of course there are spikes" is the whole reason I'm commenting in this thread. If there are spikes (if spikes are the norm) then the article that has been posted is not news. News is something anomalous, no?

Not news: "there's been this major spike the last few days! (oh btw, there have always been spikes)"

Sort of news: "there's been this major spike the last few days! the severity of the spike is fairly unprecedented, it happens once every 50 or 100 years"

Worrying news: "there's been this major spike the last few days! these have been happening more and more frequently. they have been getting more and more sever. increase in frequency is X%, the increase in severity is Y%. these increases have been going on for Z years. this falls outside climate change variability by V%.

Alarmist news: "there's been this major spike the last few days! omg, climate change!"

That Danish data set you linked to. Have you have noticed that the numbers jump around at the edge of the year? Check out the break between 1999 and 2000. I can see by eyeballing it that the winter temperature has been somewhat (not significantly) more erratic (not higher) than the model which is 1958-2002. How much more erratic though? I don't want you to interpret the data for me using your words, I want the percentage differences themselves. I'll make up my own my mind about what words to use to describe the variability if that's okay with you.

Here's what it says, “Calculation of the Arctic Mean Temperature The daily mean temperature of the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel is estimated from the average of the 00z and 12z analysis for all model grid points inside that area. The ERA40 reanalysis data set from ECMWF, has been applied to calculate daily mean temperatures for the period from 1958 to 2002. From 2002 to present the operational model (at all times) from The ECMWF is used for mean temperature calculations.”

So we're getting one number for everywhere north of the 80th parallel? What are the 00z and 12z analysis?

The document they link to explaining the methodology leaves me with more questions than it answers: http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/documentation/arctic_mean_temp_da...

Re: Arctic temperatures soar 25 degrees above normal in the dead of winter

#122

Post by yodsanklai » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 8:29 AM UTC

I see three common attitudes towards global warming. A. It's BS, there's no such thing. B. It's happening, but it's no big deal, we'll solve this problem thanks to growth and innovation. C. It's happening, we need to do something about it.

A and B are instance of cognitive dissonance.

I'm in category C. I would be in favor of any measure that could help reducing the risk even if it decreases greatly my comfort. But I don't see this happening. Even small harmless restrictions are not taken. Try to tell people that they should drive smaller and less powerful cars for instance.

But maybe the rational attitude to have (which is less heard) is to stop caring as we're not going to solve this anyway. We're not going to solve our mortality problem either and we don't worry too much about this. Future generations will have it harder than we had (climate change, pollution and resources depletion) but why should we worry about them (esp. if we don't have kids)? It's not like we really care about miserable people living now.

Re: Arctic temperatures soar 25 degrees above normal in the dead of winter

#123

Post by nareiber » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 8:34 AM UTC

briga wrote: post #4

Using events like this to illustrate that global warming is happening is about as scientifically significant as when Trump used the recent US cold snap to imply that global warming isn't happening. I'm not saying climate change doesn't exist--it certainly does--but outlying events like this aren't by themselves particularly unusual. "Normal", after all, is at the top of a bell curve, and deviations from normal should…

I think this is meant just to be a 'cherry on top' type of data point, as it's almost universally understood that our climate is indeed changing.

Re: Arctic temperatures soar 25 degrees above normal in the dead of winter

#124

Post by polotics » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:32 AM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #114

tinco wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who is convinced of climate change, I like to think my mind would be changed rather easily with some comforting graphs and believable theories on how those graphs show the earth is in fact not warming ever more rapidly since the industrial revolution. I mean, that would be really really nice.

As far as I understand the argument from people like Alex Epstein and a host of other climate alarmist sceptics is a little different. Everyone is agreeing there is climate change, in fact there have always been climate change and according to them the climate have been much worse than it is now. Most sceptics even agree that humans affect the climate. The discussion as far as I can understand is to what degree do hu…

Enough certainty for us to have now solidly moved from prisoner's dilemma to campers' dilemma http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.ch/2017/06/facing-climate-be...

Re: Arctic temperatures soar 25 degrees above normal in the dead of winter

#125

Post by KozmoNau7 » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:33 AM UTC

analogic wrote: post #60

bromuro wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are talking about average values with an high degree of deviation - so it is normal the values to be out of the average (“normality” never happens in meteorology). The problem is how much and how often this happens: global warning is very likely to be caused by human activity. Future looks ugly, everybody is (maybe unconsciously) afraid and at fault. And instead of looking for a solution I use my brain 40 hours/we…

Solution easy, just get all countries in the world to agree to stop burning fossil fuels now whatever the cost. Then just have to tell all the poor people in [poor country] that they can't live like we do because we got there first and messed it all up. We're all sure gonna be kicking ourselves after it all goes Mad Max. Completely avoidable, yet all but inevitable with no off-switch in sight in the real world.

We can barely even get people to sort their trash or turn off the lights when they leave a room.

So yeah, we're doomed.

Re: Arctic temperatures soar 25 degrees above normal in the dead of winter

#126

Post by loverofthings » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:53 AM UTC

craigsmansion wrote: post #95

loverofthings wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that many people do that. A good comparison would be FOSS. Richard Stallman inconveniences himself to the point of absurdity, but I'm pretty sure barely anyone does anything close to it. I changed my diet, I live in good housing, but when I put the numbers on paper, I'm not doing much at all, and could do much more.

> Richard Stallman inconveniences himself to the point of absurdity I'm not sure that's an apt comparison. rms simply has a workflow that doesn't require the use of proprietary software. It's not that inconvenient for him. In on-topic comparison, it would be having a lifestyle where you'd simply have no use for a car: you live close to work, enjoy riding a bicycle, etc. Of course, finding that workflow or lifestyle m…

So do vegans have a workflow that makes their diet convenient. The thing is, one has to start somewhere, and no one starts anywhere because they see the change as inconvenient.

Re: Arctic temperatures soar 25 degrees above normal in the dead of winter

#127

Post by loverofthings » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 9:54 AM UTC

bulatb wrote: post #111

loverofthings wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In similar ways, majority of people that believe in climate change do nothing (or barely anything) to fight it. No one is reducing their heating/cooling, no one is changing their diet, no one is measuring their heating patterns and trying to optimize it (by no one I mean barely anyone). People still want their 24/7 AC, their steaks, their huge cars, their big heat inefficient houses, their plane flights etc. No one d…

"Eat your vegetables" is never the answer. In climate change, because of the coordination problems, "Eat your vegetables" is so emphatically not the answer that it shouldn't even be discussed as anything except a desperate, ineffective stopgap. People will keep eating candy. They will never eat their vegetables, unless they taste like candy. It's pointless to imagine worlds in which they eat their vegetables and ever…

Vegetables are expensive because subsidies are small. There's no free market in agriculture.

I'm not exactly sure how candies are causing climate change.

Re: Arctic temperatures soar 25 degrees above normal in the dead of winter

#128

Post by bornonline1 » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 12:31 PM UTC

allthenews wrote: post #65

Climate evolves over scales of hundreds of thousands to millions of years. It is frustrating to see fellow geoscientists use some 100 years of anomalous temperature data as absolute proof of permanent catastrophic change. Having read parts of the official IPCC report, there are still significant holes all the way down to the treatment of the woefully incomplete data used to draw admittedly uncertain conclusions. The…

Climate works slowly when there aren't a billion cars and other industry. A visible analogy is the reduction of animals and plants due to human activity.

A warmer weather is an 'unknown'. We have trouble with EVERYTHING. We hardly know anything atm with the stable environment so a whole new challenge of future planet might be just to much. It is already to much.

Re: Arctic temperatures soar 25 degrees above normal in the dead of winter

#129

Post by thisacctforreal » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 12:56 PM UTC

grecy wrote: post #118

Anecdotal: I live in Whitehorse, Yukon. For reference I drive due South to Alaska. The weather here is nothing, and I mean nothing like it used to be. It would reliably be -40 for all of Jan and Feb in the past. The river would freeze to the point of holding the massive festival ON the river with cars, tents, thousands of people ,etc. The river has not frozen for a decade, it regularly goes above freezing in Jan and…

We still have the Yukon Sourdough Rendezvous festival, it's just on land now.

It's actually happening this weekend! It's always the last full weekend in February, in case our city piques your interest ;)

http://www.northofordinary.com/winter_rendezvous

Anecdotally, I've also heard from a couple of farmers that the wind up here is different than it was in the '70s.

Re: Arctic temperatures soar 25 degrees above normal in the dead of winter

#130

Post by ThomPete » Sun, Feb 25, 2018, 1:37 PM UTC

polotics wrote: post #124

ThomPete wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I understand the argument from people like Alex Epstein and a host of other climate alarmist sceptics is a little different. Everyone is agreeing there is climate change, in fact there have always been climate change and according to them the climate have been much worse than it is now. Most sceptics even agree that humans affect the climate. The discussion as far as I can understand is to what degree do hu…

Enough certainty for us to have now solidly moved from prisoner's dilemma to campers' dilemma http://cassandralegacy.blogspot.ch/2017/06/facing-climate-be...

Then show me the numbers.

I am pretty agnostic here, but if you want me to worry I need to see more than "enough certainty" and as many say "enough significance" without ever providing any actual hard numbers.

I am not a scientist but I know that if you can't actually show any concrete numbers then you have interpretation i.e. no consensus.

It's frustrating when you are trying to figure out what's up and down in this discussion.